Be the Wizard in nonprofits

(Interview with “JoY” nonprofit team)

“When the dreams of dreamers start to come true – they expand their dreaming horizons and became wizards”

Anna Pakholchuk

Anna Pakholchuk – the head of NGO “JoY”.

“From the childhood I wanted to work in the field of charity. When I was graduated after the university I decided to make my dream true and together with Lidiia and Svitlana launched our Charitable NGO. It is an incredible feeling when you feel that could help someone and be of use. Social activity opens many of opportunities for you and you can`t stop on working of your self-development. The biggest prize you could get from your charity work is the gratefulness from the people we support. I want to believe that we are making small but important things to our society.”

Tamara Baschuk

Tamara Baschuk – project manager of NGO “JoY”.

“I was never thinking that could become a member of NGO. Before I`ve only heard about the word “volunteer”. All the positive sides of being a volunteer I`ve got to know later. I start to feel that I could be useful for those children who became our beneficiaries, when we were implementing our first ideas and projects. Being a member of NGO I found the opportunity to realize personal ideas and give the kindness to those who need it. Nevertheless, I`ve got opportunities to travel while representing our projects and activities, get acquainted with interesting people and become a part of something great and useful.”

Let us share with you our 4 –year experience in making productive work in nonprofit sector. There are few basic FAQ which we usually speak about while presenting our activities to inspire other people making their own good deeds. So here we go:

Q. How do I start a non-profit organization?

A. One day I`ve got that feeling that can do more than just be a passerby and I want to bring positive changes to our society. I wanted to be useful and help people and my first idea was to support children in the orphanages. I`ve found some semi-minded people and we decided to create the first charitable NGO in our region.

Lidiia Kozhevnikova – art-director of “JoY”

Q. From what to start?

A. First of all we were a team of 3 co-founders. We wanted to create an NGO which will help children, but also will keep in mind youth people and women problems. The biggest deal was to write good Statutes, which will determine our future activities and will give us a clear vision of the organization development. After we made our first steps we’ve got support from the side – people who decided to join our volunteering movement and become change makers.

National youth meeting hosted by NGO “JoY”

I would advise you to start with the question what you want to do in your NGO, who are the beneficiaries and what kind of activities you would like to provide to your audience.

Create the brand of your NGO from the very beginning. Easy-to-remember logo, colorful social-media covers and profile pictures will attract the attention of new members, volunteers and partners. If you are not familiar with Photoshop to create the visual materials of your NGO, you could use Canva, which is free and easy t design nice posters, banners, headers, etc. http://www.canva.com/

Design the Web-presence of your NGO. You might create a web-site for your NGO free of charge with the help of such platforms like WordPress, Strikingly, Wix etc. Later on you can afford yourself to pay some money and buy a personalized domain for your web-site.

One of the projects in co-operation with “JoY” – Echo Change

Create official Facebook page. You can share here all the current updates of your work and activities alongside with freshly created pictures – here is the place to interact with the audience, while the web-site is more like your business card. For instance, there is a link to the official page of our NGO: https://www.facebook.com/joychildhood/

If your work will contain a lot of visual materials why not to use Instagram? Let the world see how the charity and volunteer`s work looks like – share your inspiration and spread the image of changemakers. There is a great guidance by Beth Kanter, explaining how to create an effective Instagram account for nonprofits: http://www.bethkanter.org/instagramming/

Q. Where to find money for the NGO’s projects?

A. Some of your activities might not need money at all, so it`s better to start with this one, to let people know more about your work.

Another thing – you can apply for grants, while writing and describing your project proposal to potential sponsors. There are many of annual calls for grant proposals, so you just need to surf through the internet and find the open-call suitable for the work of your NGO.

In the Residency of Swedish Ambassador in Kyiv

Make charitable actions, workshops, etc. to raise some funds to help those who are in need. It is not a big deal for you and your volunteers, but for your beneficiaries it could be a huge support.

Q. How to make NGO sustainable?

A. Set up a clear short term and long term goals and follow them, let`s be those small wizards who push this world to the positive changes.